'According to the latest statistics from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), men in the United States worked for pay for an average of 308 minutes per day in 2013, as compared with 242 minutes per day for women. That's the equivalent of 1,874 hours per year for men versus 1,472 hours for women. Based on these numbers, Equal Work Day will fall on April 10, 2014 in the US. Similar results can be found in Canada and many other nations.
Certainly this is not the complete story. These same statistics show that women spend more time on unpaid work*, reporting that they do more housework and spend more time on childcare than men do. There will be plenty of women viewing this page who work 50, 60 hours a week or more, as well as men who work fewer hours than their partners.
Over the past 30 years, a picture has been painted by the media in the US of a sexist workplace that deprives women of the opportunity to compete fairly in the job market. Certainly there was a time when this was true. But is it still true? Some arguments and statistics around pay equality avoid significant aspects of the choices that men and women make voluntarily. This is an important subject to study further - but no one statistic or sound bite can adequately cover the subject.'
